'Girls! Girls! Girls:' New mural brightens downtown Burlington alley

Emily Herr, an artist based in Richmond, Virginia, has travelled to several cities painting murals that portray positive images of women. She and Sarah Apple are painting a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington.
GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Emily Herr is painting a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Herr has travelled to a number of cities painting murals that express positive images of women and girls.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

Painted signs on brick walls in an alley behind College Street promise “Girls Girls Girls.” These girls are not slinky strippers, however, or supermodels in magazines and TV ads who use sex to sell everything from perfume to paper products.

These women whose images are painted near the “Girls! Girls! Girls!” signs are real women from the Burlington area. They’re women of all shapes and sizes, ages and backgrounds, and they represent the various images of women that the artist wants the world to see.

“The purpose of the actual painting is to add to the small but growing pile of positive imagery of women,” said Emily Herr, a muralist from Richmond, Virginia, who has taken her “Girls! Girls! Girls!” project on the road this summer. “(Artists) shape how people see the world pretty much, and so I think there’s a lot of responsibility there.”

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Emily Herr, top, and Sarah Apple paint a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Herr has travelled to a number of cities painting murals that express positive images of women and girls.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Herr spoke Tuesday morning as she and fellow painter Sarah Apple of Greensboro, North Carolina, took a break from working on the walls behind Battery Street Jeans, which is now located on College Street. The Lawson Lane alley Herr and Apple are working in can be reached from various entry points – off College Street, from Pine Street or even off St. Paul Street – but is one many pedestrians in downtown Burlington are likely to never see.

Anyone strolling that way now will see depictions of brightly painted, vibrant women. Herr and Apple are using fluorescent paint to create images of women meant to fight the stereotypes Herr sees far too often in popular media.

“It’s supposed to be celebratory,” Herr said.

She chose Burlington for her project after a friend of a friend of a friend of Apple connected them with Stu Sporko, owner of Battery Street Jeans. Other friends told them they had to come to Burlington, knowing they’d find plenty of people interested in their project.

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Emily Herr, left, and Sarah Apple paint a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Herr has travelled to a number of cities painting murals that express positive images of women and girls.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Those friends were right. Herr said she has received about 150 submissions of images of local women. They will only have time to complete 20 or so by the time they leave Thursday morning to drive back to Richmond.

The trek to Burlington was both serendipitous and difficult. After stops in and around Washington, D.C., Herr and Apple hit Philadelphia with no real plans. They knocked on the door of a bodega that had walls covered in graffiti and, in Herr’s words, “asked if they wanted their graffiti covered up with girls.” The owners said yes, and according to Herr were very pleased with the final product. In Brooklyn they ran into a group of traveling muralists from Spain they had met recently in Virginia and wound up working on the wall of a karate studio in Greenpoint next to the wall the Spanish artists were working on.

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Emily Herr, on ladder, paints a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Herr has travelled to a number of cities painting murals that express positive images of women and girls.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

The most-difficult moment delayed their arrival to Burlington, as a wheel fell off their mobile studio van and left them stranded in Glens Falls, New York, nixing a plan to bring their project to Montreal. They made it to Burlington over the weekend and have worked outside in mostly beautiful weather ever since.

Sporko said the alley behind his shop has been besmirched with graffiti, plagued by break-ins and littered with cigarette butts and broken glass. “The big thing about this project is it made this back alley safer,” Sporko said. “It’s just the bright colors; it gives a friendly atmosphere.”

He noted that Herr and Apple are doing the work for free. Herr has some sponsors but otherwise is funding “Girls! Girls! Girls!” herself as she strives to establish her professional mobile studio.

“They’re truly doing this as a service to the community,” Sporko said.

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Emily Herr paints a mural in the alley behind Battery Street Jeans in Burlington on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Herr has travelled to a number of cities painting murals that express positive images of women and girls.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

The women Herr and Apple are depicting in Burlington are shown doing things like teaching girls to ride mountain bikes (Sabra Daison), performing in theatrical productions (Janet Stambolian) and conducting an orchestra (Mary Bauer). One montage depicts a migrant-justice rally, with a girl holding a sign that reads “Milk with dignity.” Herr said some of those submitting by email or Instagram have done so with their own photos but many have been nominated by someone else. About a third of those doing the nominating are men, according to Herr.

“All of these women live here,” Herr said of her subjects. “Some of them have come by and said, like, ‘Oh, that’s me!’”